When David Heikkinen (MBA ’98) retired from energy investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. in 2012, he wasn’t quite ready to sail off into the sunset.
Heikkinen had devoted nearly 20 years of his life to energy, starting out as an engineer with Shell and later serving as an analyst and director at Capital One Southcoast Capital, Pickering Energy Partners and its successor, Tudor Pickering. Along the way, he’d also become one of the energy sector’s
most respected analysts. As Heikkinen began to mull the next step in his career, he called together a few old friends — including former colleagues Jason Adler (MBA ’01) and Marshall Carver (MBA ’01) — to talk about potential opportunities in energy.
“No other firm was focused solely on energy equity research as the primary business
driver,” Heikkinen recalls. “There were a lot of money management, corporate finance,
investment bank, corporate-access-based firms, but we just thought we could build a
competitive business around the best energy research on the street.”
And build it they did. Less than six months later — in December 2012 — Heikkinen,
Adler and Carver founded Heikkinen Energy Advisors, a boutique investment firm dedicated
exclusively to energy research. Based in Houston and with offices in New Orleans, Dallas, and
Boulder, Colorado, the firm covers 70 companies, focusing on upstream oil and gas producers,
offshore drilling contractors and oilfield services companies, and MLPs.
“The biggest difference between us and every other boutique investment bank is our
business is centered solely on doing good fundamental research,” Heikkinen says. “We do not
have bankers and therefore don’t chase investment banking or advisory work. The core of the
business is helping institutional investors make good investments in energy.
“Once your business model relies on banking transactions, it’s hard not to just pursue
transactions as opposed to focusing on making good investments,” he adds. “Eliminating
friction in the research process is a subtle but critical difference in how we think and work.”
The firm has grown rapidly since its launch, tripling the number of companies it follows
and growing its revenues each year, but one thing that has remained constant is the company’s
deep Tulane roots. Twelve of the firm’s 27 employees are graduates of the Freeman School and
most, not coincidentally, are veterans of Burkenroad Reports.
“Burkenroad Reports is the closest thing to doing real equity research that I’ve seen from
any school,” Heikkinen says. “We’ve hired people from a lot of business schools, but I think
the program and the methodology is perfect for priming students for equity research jobs.”
While interest in energy stocks has waned in the last year due to low oil prices, Heikkinen
says those low prices have had another effect: They’ve led investors who are interested in
energy to recognize the importance of high-quality, unbiased research. That’s something
he’s proud to offer.
“Everything in the world, from Heikkinen Energy to the iPhone, started as a thought in someone’s head,”
Heikkinen says. “We have the right people in the right places and we use technology aggressively to enable a
small group of people to do more together than they could have done individually. We’re not afraid to do things
differently, and we actually want to. That’s how we converted the original 2012 thought into our reality and
what enables us be successful.”
